New York Times savages Yann Martel’s Beatrice and Virgil

Yann Martel’s 2001 novel, “Life of Pi,” was a charming, eccentric fable — part philosophical meditation on God, part children’s adventure story about a boy’s voyage across the ocean on a lifeboat with a tiger named Richard Parker.

Mr. Martel’s new book, “Beatrice and Virgil,” unfortunately, is every bit as misconceived and offensive as his earlier book was fetching.

However, that was not the end of it…

Though Virgil and Beatrice are sweetly engaging characters, the play in which they appear remains a derivative recycling of Beckett, and Mr. Martel’s efforts to turn their tale into a kind of philosophical meditation on the Holocaust result in a botched and at times cringe-making fable